Imperious measurements

[mirrorshard]

vashti linked to a US-authored guide to building a tin-can wireless antenna. The measurements are all in inches, which got me thinking.

How do you measure 1.21" in any meaningful manner? The rulers I have here are almost all marked out in thirty-secondths on the inches side, and whilst one has tenths for half its length, it doesn't go any finer than that. I don't even think you could fit another ten subdivisions into one of those and still be able to use it. Possibly with a special magnifying section, I suppose...

Best answer gets a cookie.

Comments

[kake]

I suspect Adam's already won the cookie. I was wondering about the reason for specifying a measurement like that; it might be something to do with it being the square of 1.1, and there being Maths involved somewhere.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to award cookies just yet, but he's certainly presented a fully functional solution!

I'm sure there's Maths in the process somewhere, but not knowing enough about the area I don't know whether it's here or whether this is voodoo specificity and you just need "to the middle of the can".